You Don’t Have To Hit Your Head: Get Checked Out By A Neurologist After You Are In An Auto Accident
If you or your loved ones are in a car crash, please get checked out by a neurologist for a traumatic brain injury (TBI). If you have neck pain from whiplash after a car crash, chances are that you also have a TBI, also known as a concussion.
The mechanism for an auto accident related neck injury and a concussion are the same.
Statistics & Symptoms
Motor vehicle crashes are the most common cause of emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and deaths related to TBI among people aged 15 to 34, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The symptoms of a TBI include: headache, confusion, nausea, fatigue, sleep disturbances (either trouble sleeping, or sleeping longer than normal), dizziness, balance problems, impaired coordination, speech problems, slow thinking, trouble finding the right word, attention difficulties, sensitivity to light, vision problems, loss of memory, and loss of consciousness.
What Causes a TBI?
You do not have to actually hit your head on something to have a concussion. That’s right! You don’t have to have any physical head trauma to get a TBI.
A concussion is caused by violent MOTION of the head—either back and forth, or side to side. When you are in a car crash, your head moves suddenly because it is not held into place by something like a seat belt. The acceleration of your head, and the accompanying shear forces, causes your brain to rotate inside your skull.
The brain is made of something like a JELL-O or Silly Putty consistency. The shear forces cause the brain to be deformed from the motion inside the skull. This deformation or strain on the brain causes tissue tear hemorrhages, damage to your neurons (brain cells), damage to your axons (the fibers in your brain that provide connections between your brain cells), and torn blood vessels/veins (subdural hematoma).
This initial structural damage to the brain from the sudden head motion ultimately leads to a progressive cascade of biological disruptions which impair the long-term function of the brain.
Biological Disruptions After the Injury
After the concussion causes the axons and neurons to be damaged, there is diminished blood flow throughout the brain, an abrupt release of neurotransmitters (especially glutamate), a massive increase in calcium which impairs mitochondrial function, free radical production, and an electrolyte imbalance.
The brain initially increases glucose metabolism and electrolyte production in order to maintain brain cell membrane homeostasis. However, because there is a diminished blood flow in the brain, there is not enough oxygen to perform the task, which results in an energy crisis. Then, the concussed brain goes into a state of depressed metabolism.
The persistent increases in calcium further impair metabolism by damaging the mitochondria and causing free radical production. This leads to neuroinflammation, altered neurotransmission (due to the structural breakdown of the axons and neuron and glia membranes, and the lack of energy to the brain cells), blood-brain barrier breakdown, swelling of the brain (edema), and brain cell death.
Again, this is a process that can extend over weeks, months, years, and decades. A single concussion can produce a frightening chain of long-term effects.
Long-Term Effects
If the brain cells breakdown or die, and there is not enough energy to sustain them, there are obvious consequences.
These long-term consequences include Alzheimer’s Disease; Parkinson’s Disease; Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE); Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS); irritability, depression, and other personality changes, etc.
There Is Hope.
Neurologists and neuropsychologists have cutting edge treatment protocols in place to mitigate the long-term effects of a TBI, such as Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy (CRT).
However, the first step is making the appointment with the neurologist and getting the appropriate imaging tests done to determine the nature and extent of your concussion.
After reading the long-term effects of a concussion, and now that you know that you don’t have to have head trauma to get a concussion, don’t you think you should get checked out?
COHEN LAW GROUP
REFERENCES:
Mckee AC, Daneshvar DH. The neuropathology of traumatic brain injury. Handb Clin Neurol. 2015;127:45–66. doi:10.1016/B978-0-444-52892-6.00004-0
Cullen DK, Harris JP, Browne KD, et al. A Porcine Model of Traumatic Brain Injury via Head Rotational Acceleration. Methods Mol Biol. 2016;1462:289–324. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-3816-2_17
Cameron M. Marshall, Howard Vernon, John J. Leddy & Bradley A. Baldwin (2015) The role of the cervical spine in post-concussion syndrome, The Physician and Sportsmedicine, 43:3, 274-284, DOI: 10.1080/00913847.2015.1064301
Meaney DF, Smith DH. Biomechanics of concussion. Clin Sports Med. 2011;30(1):19–vii. doi:10.1016/j.csm.2010.08.009
Toklu HZ, Tümer N. Oxidative Stress, Brain Edema, Blood–Brain Barrier Permeability, and Autonomic Dysfunction from Traumatic Brain Injury. In: Kobeissy FH, editor. Brain Neurotrauma: Molecular, Neuropsychological, and Rehabilitation Aspects. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press/Taylor & Francis; 2015. Chapter 5. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK299195/
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